LOST ILLUSIONS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 16497, 24 March 1917, Page 2 (Supplement)

LOST ILLUSIONS.

THE-END OF FREE TRADE. FRANK • SPEECH BY ; ME. HODGE. Mr. Joto. Hodge, i :\ the ■'_ Minister : -\ foi Labour, speaking at Kotherham, said thai for a great many years Labour had beer asking for .a Labour Ministry, but now he-regretted to say, in one instance, he had been turned down by his own Laboui colleagues. Labour people had been asking for Labour men on Government' committees. He 'invited one of the federation of trade unions to nominate a representative for a committee and they had refused, That was.not playing the game. Proceeding, Mr. Hodge said that when peace came he meant to have the machinery ready. He had mapped out a ; policy which would more than double the number of Labour exchanges. ■ Another thing which would be done was that eacli man would at least get a month's furlough and the separation ' allowance would be continued to his wife. The country had been divided into eight divisions for labour exchanges, and it was hoped and believed that demobilisation would go with a swing. The British Workers' National League, under whose auspices they were meeting, had been brought into being because a few people of pro-German sympathies who described themselves as Socialists were making it believed in France that they represented socialist and trade union opinion in this country. He saw that the secretary of a certain section of that body had sent a letter to President Wilson on the subject of peace. The statements contained in that document were utterly untrue. The great volume of trade union opinion was that a premature or inconclusive pence would be a greater disaster than the war itself. We must fight this war to a finish for the' benefit of posterity, no matter how great the sacrifices. No More "Free Trade." I am one of those sillv people, Mr. Hodge continued, who went 10 Germany on a peace mission in 1910 and 1012. There was great talk of war. You know that the Kaiser was then rattling the scabbard and jangling the sword and acting the part of a swashbuckler. Everybody was uneasy and it was thought desirable that we should send a peace mission to Germany. I almost think, when I look back on those peace missions, that we were an awful set of— can supply the word yourselves. I have heard Mr. Apnleton say that at one of the International Federation of Trades Unions there was the discussion of a resolution on a general strike for the purpose of preventing war. One of the Germans said outside the conference: " Oh, Mr. Appleton, your English want a general strike against war because you are afraid. We have got an army. We have got the organisation. Wo are in advance of you industrially, and you think this is an easy way of beating Germany." What silly fools we have all been. The German Socialists could have prevented the war, but they were imbued with the same ideas as the Kaiser. I hope wo realise the meaning of all this peace guff, The Germans are suffering from sore feet now. If Germans had been wiso and had simply carried on their industrial war we should have been played out in the next -20 years. Before the war, like the silly beggars we were, we thought free trade meant the prevention, of war, that so long as we had the "open door" Germany would never risk the loss of her trade by indulging in war. We wanted cheap commodities, but I think) the war has dropped the scales from our eyes. Once we were blind; now we see. Three million tons of steel were coming into this country from Germany. I am having that leakage stopped now. I am going to have no more German steel in this country while there is an idle furnace in this country. When every furnace here is occupied, then I might let a bit in. How silly we were in the past to have an open door as against a closed door. I think we want to give them tit-for-tat in future. It used to he said that no trade union leader believed in a policy of that -kind. We cannot say that today. Australia is a . protected country, and the standard of living there is the highest in the world. So-called tariff reform does not mean the lowering of the standard of life, as some peonle seem to assume. If I only get the whole-hearted support of capital and labour, there is little doubt as to the great success that we will achieve.